The Old Liberals

August 29, 1996

THE DAILY FED

The Old Liberals

Much has been said and written about how the Democratic National Convention has been carefully crafted to reflect the ``New Democrat'' centrist mold of the party under President Clinton. But much of the old Democratic liberalism remains, providing what occasional excitement there has been here.

While Clinton and his chief political strategist, Dick Morris, labor diligently to paint the President as a man of the middle, it fell to old liberals such as Jesse Jackson and Mario M. Cuomo to light, with old Democratic rhetoric, a few sparks among the delegates.

The two, arguably the best orators in the party, managed without excessively pointed criticism of Clinton to remind the audience in the convention hall of the old Democratic Party that once unabashedly wore its heart on its sleeve.

Both openly expressed their disappointment with Clinton's swallowing of the Republican welfare reform bill that effectively removes the safety net under poor children that was at the core of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But in the interest of party unity, Jackson settled for observing, as Clinton himself has said, that ``we must make the commitment to right the wrongs in this bill'' and elect a Democratic Congress in November to make it possible. Then he proclaimed that the President ``deserves four more years'' on his record on other issues of social justice.

In customary Jackson fashion, he plucked the liberal heartstrings of the delegates by reminding them of the party's traditional role as protector of the little people, firing them up with a repeated chant that was repeated by them and rolled across the hall: ``Keep that faith! We will win!''

Cuomo struck the same chord, criticizing the welfare law but saying he had discussed the matter with Clinton and Vice President Albert Gore Jr. and could report that Clinton was confident he could avoid any damage if he is given a Democratic Congress.

``Many of us, and I among them, believe that the risk to children was too great to justify the action of signing that bill, no matter what its political benefits,'' Cuomo said, to heavy applause. ``But the President is confident that he can avert the risk by further legislation before children are actually harmed.''

Cuomo also praised Clinton for finding, after the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, ``a way to preserve our party's basic principles while erasing the stigmas that had been branded upon our reputation over the years''--among them Republican charges that Democratic liberalism espoused ever-bigger government and was soft on crime.

``One at a time,'' he said, ``the President was lifting the albatrosses from around the neck of this great Democratic Party so that now, with all those stigmas virtually erased, we are free once again to be Democrats, progressives, constructive Democrats. And we are ready now to continue the work of restoring the American dream that was invented by Democrats eight decades ago.''

The ``way'' to which Cuomo referred--toning down the old liberal rhetoric and setting himself apart from the party's bleeding hearts--is in fact at the core of continuing liberal dissatisfaction with Clinton. But the specter of what Cuomo called ``the radical Right and radical revolutionaries led by Newt Gingrich,'' endlessly demonizing liberalism, has been the unifying force at this convention.

Cuomo, echoing his 1984 convention description of America as one family, called on all Democrats to jettison factionalism without abandoning the party's liberal traditions. ``Listen to me, please,'' he said. ``Forget about new Democrats, old Democrats, conservative Democrats, liberal Democrats, neo-liberal Democrats.''

Then he went on: ``The Republicans are the real threat to the most fundamental of all the ideas--that this nation is at its best only when we see ourselves, all of us, as one family. That is the heart of the matter.'' The nation's children, workers, elderly and, specifically, ``those legal immigrants, they are our life force,'' Cuomo said.

The assembly of supposedly Clinton Democrats cheered themselves hoarse as Jackson and Cuomo preached the old-time liberal religion--but not on prime time. Neither speech was covered live by the major television networks, which was no accident at a Clinton coronation at which Jackson and Cuomo are still regarded by some ``New Democrats'' as albatrosses themselves.